Report: Border Patrol Wrongly Arrested Hundreds in N.Y.

U.S. Border Patrol agents in western New York have been rewarded with cash bonuses and Home Depot gift cards in an incentive program that has grown at the same time as has an overly aggressive enforcement culture, a new study states.

While the study does not definitively link the incentive program and the enforcement practices, the report from the New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic says that the Border Patrol culture — especially at the Rochester bus and train stations — is one that “maximizes arrest rates.”

Between 2006 and 2010, close to 300 immigrants with legal status were arrested by Rochester-based Border Patrol agents then released, according to the study.